Runaway Train (1985)

I never thought I'd be writing a genuinely positive review for a film produced by Cannon. Runaway Train stars Jon Voight and Eric Roberts as cons who escape from an Alaskan maximum security prison and get caught on a train that loses control through the tundra. Voight plays Manny, a rough, misanthropic convict who may have completely gone sour. Roberts plays a not-so-smart but enthusiastic young buck who tags along because he sees Manny as a kind of hero. What's so striking about the film is that while the characters face the obstacles you would expect out of a suspense/action film involving runaway trains, a good portion of the time is spent just with the characters as they hash out their problems, their insecurities, their jilted worldviews. In the face of possible death at the hand of circumstance, they're forced to confront themselves. Voight overacts and gets a ton of kind of weird off-the-cuff monologues, but they were entertaining and not terribly distracting. They spoke more to the nature of his character than any relevance to the plot. Roberts' character was pretty spot-on podunk dummy who means well. Based on a Kurosawa script (which is maybe why it's a cut above the usual Cannon ilk), and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky who I know very little about, the film, despite some major flaws in the third act, lives up to its critical reputation. An excellent Cannon film is a mythical thing, and Runaway Train doesn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

8/10

Devils, The (1971)

Ken Russell's controversial film is brooding and powerful. The Devils depicts the downfall of charming priest, Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed). At the beginning, he is concerned with earthly pleasures--sex, power, vanity--but as the film progresses and the Church and government tighten their grip on Grandier, he reveals despite his faults, he was not completely bad. The film is famous for having graphic scenes depicting violence and nudity, including scenes of torture and hysterical "possessed" nuns masturbating and having an orgy. These scenes were certainly shocking, but they were often overly self-indulgent. Really, the film is the most interesting whenever Reed is on screen. The other performances were fantastic all around, with Vanessa Redgrave as the neurotic Sister Jeanne and Michael Gothard as the over-the-top "rockstar" witchhunter/exorcist. The art direction and sets are gorgeous, and curiously, completely removed from 17th century setting. The film punches hard showing the extent that man is willing to go to corrupt political and religious institutions to his will, and comes highly recommended if you've got the stomach for it.

9/10

Footloose (1984)

The 80s were a wonderful time for pop hits in film. In Footloose, you've got the gargantuan Kenny Loggins writing and performing two great hits as well as songs like "Let's Hear It For the Boy" and the dramatic (is there any other kind?) Bonnie Tyler song "Holding Out for a Hero." Kevin Bacon dances his way into conflict with a fundamentalist Christian town led by John Lithgow in a surprisingly well-rounded "villain" role. The film is cheesy, and it's hard not to be when full-length synth-laced 80s pop hits are playing every five minutes. When Kevin Bacon dances in the warehouse to his little car stereo, they don't even attempt to make the music sound like it's coming out of a car stereo. The instant he turns it on, it's already completely omnipresent and blasting full volume. This logic follows for every boombox and stereo in the film. And that's how hard they must have been pushing the Footloose soundtrack to sell. It worked.

7/10

Edit--corrected the title of the Bonnie Tyler song